Publication: Flood impact on the Spanish Mediterranean coast since 1960 based on
the prevailing synoptic patterns
Authors
Gil-Guirado, Salvador ; Pérez-Morales, Alfredo ; Pino, David ; Peña, Juan Carlos ; LópezMartí, Francisco
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Publisher
Elsevier
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150777
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info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Description
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Abstract
In a changing climate and in social context, tools and databases with high spatiotemporal resolution are needed
for increasing the knowledge on the relationship betweenmeteorological events and flood impacts; hence, analysis of high-resolution spatiotemporal databases with detailed information on the frequency, intensity, and impact of floods is necessary. However, themethodological nature of flood databases hinders relating specific flood
events to the weather events that cause them; hence, methodologies for classifying flood cases according to the
synoptic patterns that generate them are also necessary.
Knowing which synoptic patterns are likely to generate risk situations allows for a probabilistic approach with
high spatial resolution regarding the timing of occurrence, affected area, and expected damage from floods. To
achieve these objectives, we use the SMC-Flood Database, a high-resolution spatiotemporal flood database covering
the 1960-2015 period for all municipalities along the Spanish Mediterranean coast. To relate floods with
the synoptic conditions that generated them, we used a multivariate analysis method on the corrected daily
anomalies of the surface pressure fields, 850 hPa temperature, and 500 hPa geopotential height, all of which
were obtained from the 20th Century Reanalysis Project V2.
Results showthat 12 atmospheric synoptic patterns can statistically explain the 3608 flood cases that occurred in
the study area between 1960 and 2015. These flood cases were classified into 847 atmospherically induced flood
events. These results reduce the uncertainty during decisionmaking because of the classification of potential risk situations. The Mediterranean Basin is a region where floods have serious socioeconomic impacts; hence, this
work helps improving prevention measures and providing information for policymakers, mainly regarding
land use planning and early warning systems.
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Citation
Science of the Total Environment 807 (2022) 150777
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